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<\/a>Former Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) was appointed Thursday to be Director of National Intelligence. (Photo by Drew Angerer\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n
By John Gizzi
\nNEWSMAX<\/p>\n
Although it was barely reported, the widely-praised appointment Thursday of former Sen. Dan Coats (R.-Ind.) to be Director of National Intelligence had a sense of poetic justice.<\/p>\n
Sixteen years before President-elect Donald Trump turned to the former senator and diplomat for the top intelligence post, Coats had been publicly considered and then rejected as secretary of defense under the last Republican president-elect.<\/p>\n
In December, 2000, Coats, who had retired from the Senate two years before, was \u201cat the top of [President-elect George W.] Bush\u2019s list\u201d to be secretary of defense, wrote Bob Woodward in his book “State of Denial.”<\/p>\n
A past Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Coats had the backing of conservatives within the Republican Party. Several news outlets reported his appointment to oversee the Pentagon was in the works.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Coats had not been impressive in his interview with Bush and Vice President-elect Dick Cheney,\u201d reported Woodward, \u201cCoats knew the new generals mostly from a distance and was lukewarm on the national missile defense system Bush had promised in the campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bush\u2019s new reluctance to name Coats secretary of defense gave Cheney the opening to suggest a candidate of his own: Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney\u2019s old boss and mentor, who had been secretary of defense under President Gerald Ford from 1975-77.<\/p>\n
In selecting the man who would be secretary of defense for the next six years and the face of his Administration in the war on terror, Bush defied his own father. Rumsfeld and former President George H.W. Bush, past rivals in Congress and the Ford Administration, \u201ccouldn\u2019t stand each other,\u201d according to Woodward.<\/p>\n
During a lunch with this reporter in 2010 (when he ran successfully for his former Senate seat), Coats said \u201cI thought I had it [the secretary of defense position].\u201d<\/p>\n
Coats, 76, now becomes principal advisor to Trump on all intelligence matters related to national security and will oversee the sixteen-agency intelligence community.<\/p>\n